Letter template to send to City Council

Good afternoon, Council Member _______,

As a concerned New Orleans resident, I’m reaching out to vehemently oppose Ordinance 35,137, a dangerous ordinance that puts the safety, well-being, and privacy of our community at risk by approving the use of racist surveillance technologies, including live facial recognition cameras. Furthermore, I oppose any other ordinances or legislation that approve and expand the use of facial recognition and other harmful surveillance technologies.

The ordinance expands and approves the use of surveillance systems that infringe on our privacy and have been known to misidentify people of color. This grants the police broad and unchecked power that exceeds even those exercised by Project NOLA, including the ability to conduct surveillance without judicial oversight or an arrest warrant. The proposed ordinance revision seeks to modify current regulations by broadening the deployment of these harmful surveillance technologies, which threaten our privacy, personal data, and freedom of expression. It defines the circumstances under which both live facial recognition technology AND characteristic tracking technology can be used in broad terms, such as a valid arrest warrant, assisting in certain investigations, or “reasonable articulable suspicion” that immediately locating an individual will prevent a crime that would lead to serious bodily harm or death.

The passage of this ordinance or any similar ordinance would mark the City of New Orleans' use of live facial recognition technology (LFT), a tool no other American city has been willing to adopt due to privacy and constitutional concerns.

As our political landscape evolves, we are seeing these surveillance technologies used against our immigrant community, abortion seekers, labor movement leaders, and activists exercising their right to free speech. Our immigrant community is currently under attack and is being surveilled and kidnapped by ICE, who actively use these surveillance technologies and would have access to the use of these cameras and data through our state fusion centers.

Live facial recognition ordinances normalizes and codifies the systematic use of racist surveillance technologies and biometric data collection without any safety guardrails. The data collected through these technologies can be shared with third parties, including private companies and federal agencies like ICE or the National Guard.

In 2020, New Orleans community members partnered with City officials to implement guardrails on surveillance technology to prevent racially biased policing tactics and protect the civil liberties of New Orleanians. I am extremely concerned that these protections are being eroded and stand against the use of these racist technologies in our city. With the publishing of the egregious report from the Washington Post and this report from the ACLU, we know our concerns are based on sound evidence and care for our community. We urge you to stop from introducing any other ordinances that approve and expand the use of facial recognition and to safeguard the safety and privacy of our community, especially our most vulnerable community members that include our immigrant and Black communities.

Respectfully,

_______________________

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